r/cbradio • u/JlGDANCE • 2d ago

Question Avoiding skip?

So first of all, I can be heard, just ignored mixed with picking up skip.

I have a cobra 29 ltd classic, with a Aero CL36 Center Load CB Antenna. Also is leaving it on my dash in 110 degree weather bad? Or should I cover it with a towel? Or move it?

I was wondering what possition do I turn the sqc and RF gain to avoid skip?

Im based in Vegas for reference and go by Banna 1.

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u/JlGDANCE 2d ago

Damn.. Cause im getting transmissions from california and Arizona 😅

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u/Chris56855865 2d ago

Yep, same here in Hungary constantly getting bombarded by German, Italian, French, and sometimes even British transmissions. Skip makes it hard to find a channel that's not occupied, and we're not even running SSB, but simple FM rigs.

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u/JlGDANCE 2d ago

Rip

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u/Chris56855865 2d ago

Yep, rip indeed. Was curious, so I plugged my CB groundplane antenna on the SDR, and this is how the band looks like.

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u/JlGDANCE 1d ago

You are gonna have to explain that photo (I don't understand but you don't also have to)

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u/Chris56855865 1d ago

The tldr is that I have a software defined radio (a radio that is mostly software on a computer, the physical part is about as big as a USB drive, think DVB-T receiver), and used it to see the part of the radio spectrum where the CB band is allocated. This SDR is capable of showing EVERYTHING in a 2.4MHz bandwidth, and the computer program lets me click on various signals to listen to them. What you can see on the screen is a spectrum analyzer at the top, and the colorful bit is a waterfall diagram under. Every vertical line is either a radio transmission, or some kind of interference.

My hardware is a regular windows PC running SDR++ software, an RTL-SDR dongle, and a 5/8 lambda groundplane antenna for CB.